About the Federal Courts Indian Law Bulletin

Frequency of
Updates: Research is performed at least once a week to identify new
cases. Email alerts will be sent out on when new information
is published on the web site. All older information will be stored in the
bulletin archives

Selection Policy & Process: The National
Indian Law Library (NILL) endeavors to retrieve important cases
decided by the federal courts (including the U.S. Courts of Appeal, U.S. District
Courts, U.S. Bankruptcy Courts, Court of Federal Claims, and U.S.
Tax Court) that deal with a federal Indian law issue. (By "Indian
law" we mean cases that deal with the "status of the Indian
tribes and their special relationship to the federal government,
with all the attendant consequences for the tribes and their members,
the states and their citizens, and the federal government"
as defined by Judge William Canby, Jr., an Indian law scholar (Canby,
William C., Jr. American Indian Law in a Nutshell, 3rd ed.
St. Paul, Minn: West Group, 1998).) Originally only U.S. Courts of Appeal cases were included. In 2002, U.S. District
Court cases were added. In 2003, Court of Federal Claims cases were
added and in 2006 U.S. Tax Court cases and U.S. Bankruptcy cases
were added.

We run a very broad search in Westlaw Courts of Appeal, District
Courts, Court of Federal Claims, U.S. Bankruptcy and U.S. Tax Court
databases to identify new Indian law cases. We also include cases
from other federal courts such as the bankruptcy and
NLRB courts. The databases may not contain all cases and the research
strategy may not identify every case in the databases. We also monitor online groups, Indian law-related newsletters and receive tips from colleagues
on new cases. During this process, the non-attorney library staff
uses its judgment as to which cases should be included in the bulletin.
Therefore, this bulletin should not be considered an exhaustive
list of cases, should not substitute for independent research,
and does not constitute legal advice.

Cases
involving Native Americans but not related to Indian law are excluded.
Occasionally non-Indian law cases will be included if the case outcome
will have a major impact on Native Americans. "Related news
stories," which accompany some of the cases, are selected based
on the criteria set out in the News
Bulletin "about" page.

Summary & holding
information: We provide case summary and holding information
developed by West Group under an agreement. When summary or holding
information is not available, we provide summary information from
the text of the opinion.

Providing the opinions: We provide links to cases freely available
online. When opinions are unreported or are not freely
available, we download opinions from Westlaw, remove
any copyright-protected material and provide a link to the opinion
on our web site.